


the deep brilliant blue

by vampirecaligula



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Brothers, Gen, some mild horror i suppose? and angst? i don't think it's too bad but people have yelled
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-25
Updated: 2015-10-25
Packaged: 2018-04-28 04:16:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5077471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampirecaligula/pseuds/vampirecaligula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You aren’t certain what happens after that.  Later, the memories will be fuzzy, and you will question for years what actually occurred, but at the time the scene is vivid and your strongest sensation is that you feel <i>warm.</i></p><p>
How <i>does</i> it feel to have venom coursing through your veins?</p>
            </blockquote>





	the deep brilliant blue

**Author's Note:**

> i'm finally crossposting my old-ass tumblr work over here, where it'll hopefully find a new audience! i felt bad having all this carpathian bros stuff buried deep where people couldn't find it. enjoy, and thanks for reading!
> 
> romania's name is mircea and moldova's is ciprian. they're said meer-cha and chee-preean, using an awfully rough american approximation. please google the pronunciations i am so sorry

**1.**

It’s late in the evening and everyone is out celebrating – you can hear the commotion even in your ramshackle house, the one with the paint that peels on the outside – and desperately, you long to join them.  It’s been too long since you’ve had something to be joyous about.

“Are you going to go?” your brother asks you.  He sits at his table hemming an old shirt, wrapped in two coats to fend off the cold.  He’s small and always been a little sickly; it runs in the family; but tonight he seems healthy enough.  His cheeks are round spots, a soft pink that fades into the white of the rest of his face. 

You shake your head.  “No,” you say with a smile.  “It’s just as good here with you.”

Your brother (his name is Ciprian, and his hair pokes out over the thick fur coat like little dark spikes)  scoffs at this.  “No it isn’t,” he says.  “I can tell when you’re bored, Mircea.”

You take offense at this.  You are an _excellent_ actor.  “I’m not bored,” you retort.

“Your eyes are kind of glazed over and you haven’t turned a page in that book for almost an hour,” Ciprian points out.  “Go on, you’re not doing any good by sitting there.  I’ll be fine here, I’m almost grown anyway.”

You’re touched, as you always are, at how self-sacrificing your brother is.  Had the situation been reversed, you could never have given up the company of your brother.  However, you feel only a little bit of guilt as you hastily scrape your chair against the rough floorboards, getting to your feet, and pull your best coat on over your clothing.  You bid your brother farewell, and promise you won’t be gone long.

Ciprian smiles and tells you to have fun.           

* * *

**2.**

The streets are alive tonight with men and women and children from all across the city, drinking and shouting and laughing and making as merry as possible.  The city stench of people and waste and horses and alcohol and food, every kind of food, drifts and mingles in the air and provides a stark contrast to the biting cold of the night. 

Some people greet you, and you smile and greet them back, and assure them that all is well with yourself and your brother.  More people glare at you – these increase in frequency as you leave your neighborhood – and one or two even approach you with malicious intent.  You escape these easily, ducking into the crowd and sliding between dark coats and fur hats and the long, flowing skirts of women adopting the latest western fashions.  You hadn’t intended on making any kind of money tonight, but the crowd is so very dense that they don’t notice when their pockets lighten and yours do not.

You purposefully avoid _Podul Mogoșoaiei_ – _no_ , you remind yourself, _Calea Victoriei now_ – as the food and drink there is richer, more expensive, and generally low quality, much like the crowd that populates it.  The backstreets have a rougher population by many standards, but these are the people you grew up with, and you’ve long since mastered talking yourself out of unfortunate situations.

As you approach your usual bar you see a woman lurking outside of it.  Her dress is a deep blue; it is plain, but the fabric is costly.  Her golden hair is pulled behind her head, but one or two curls fall from it to wrap around her forehead.  In the light from the bar’s door, you see that her lips are a soft pink.

She smiles at you – a real smile, one you don’t see on women even when they don’t know you, one with her eyes and entire countenance – and you melt.  You forget how unusual it is to see a woman in this area, especially one of this caliber.  When she says, “Buy me a drink?” you agree without hesitation.

* * *

**3.**

You aren’t certain what happens after that.  Later, the memories will be fuzzy, and you will question for years what actually occurred, but at the time the scene is vivid and your strongest sensation is that you feel _warm_. 

She introduces herself with a smile; she is Belle, and from some small country north of France.  You speak to each other in French, and her accent is beautiful.  You don’t tell her much about yourself – you were a soldier, you say, in the war, and in fact you saved your regiment no less than three times.  The words come fluently, and you weave your tales without hesitation.  She is impressed.  Of course she is.

At some point the alcohol starts to go to your head, and you’re not sure when that is, only that it must be unusually strong tonight because it hasn’t been more than two hours.   This is when she leaves, a vicious smile on her face and a quick glance back at you before she waves at you to follow.  You drop some _lei_ on the table, you’re not sure how much, and ignore the manager when he begins to grumble.

The cold hits you when you step outside, but you barely notice as you stumble after Belle.  Her retreating figure disappears, almost too quickly to see, down the street and in an alley to the left.  You try to follow her closely, but have to call her name once or twice, laughing at this game.

She sticks her head around a wall, and lightly calls you an idiot and you point out that _she’s_ the one running off, and she retorts that you really ought to be man enough to keep up with her to begin with.

As soon as you step into her alley, she wraps her delicate fingers – ungloved – around your collar and draws you in for a kiss.

Belle’s lips are cold but soft, and she tastes like the sweetest, strangest mixture of alcohol and something else you can’t quite place.  You wrap your arms around her, hands settling in the small of her back as you pull her closer, sucking on her bottom lip.

She moves from your mouth to your cheek, and to your jaw, and as she moves to your neck you gasp just a bit.

You cry out in pain and surprise when her teeth sink into your skin and she _bites_ , and you’ve been bitten before, even done your share of biting, but now it feels as if she’s sliced through skin with a serrated knife and you’ve never felt pain so deeply before.

“What the _hell_ —“ you begin to ask, but she looks up at you, brushing a strand of your hair away from your forehead with fingers gentler than your own mother’s.

 _Shhh_ , she murmurs, and presses another kiss to your jaw.   _It’s alright._

Her voice is a whisper; soothing, healing. 

You don’t question it when her teeth return to your neck and she begins to drink.

* * *

**4.**

_A few drops of blood_ , you hear someone mutter in your sleep.  _That’s all it takes._

_Only a few drops._

* * *

**5.**

You awaken slumped against a wall in an alleyway, the stars hanging too bright in the narrow strip of sky above.  There are voices down the street, talking about _how disturbing it is to leave a body just lying somewhere for anyone to find_ , and how _it doesn’t matter now, the poor bastard probably doesn’t deserve a Christian burial anyway_.  Briefly you consider calling out, assuring them that you aren’t dead – in fact, you’ve never felt more alive, though you can barely get your eyes open – but when you open your mouth only a rough croak comes out.

Your limbs are almost heavier than your head; you stumble twice trying to drag yourself to your feet, and when you finally do manage the world swims and rotates and the street entrance – supposedly only just ahead – shifts places every second. 

You’re smart enough to recognize when you are sick, or even when you are drunk, but there is a growing knot in your stomach and a scathing burn somewhere deep within and you come to the conclusion that you have been poisoned.

* * *

**6.**

How does it feel to have venom coursing through your veins?

It is like liquid fire, white-hot and obliterating all in its path as it turns your limbs to so much sand and you cannot think, cannot _feel_ but to cry out at the pain.  Your legs will no longer carry your weight; your steps are staggering and uneven, but your fingers tremble too terribly to grasp the wall for balance.

In this way you slowly make your way back to your home, stumbling across the streets and through alleys as a barrage of noises scents sights colors assault your senses: something disgusting from the kitchen of one house, and something delicious in the bedroom of another.  It is dark but you can see every bright green and pink and yellow wall in a strange, glowing haze.  You twist your head back and forth (and your neck aches when you do so) but the buildings lean and curve and their walls refuse to stay in one place; when you try to grasp the corner of a room, your hand finds nothing, and you stagger forward.  The sky is a deep, brilliant blue; the stars shine down in a range of colors and lights and you realize now why God took colors away from the night.  You wonder, in a brief feverish moment, if this is what Moses saw when the Lord revealed Himself to him in all His glory.

And through all this pervades a savage thirst, one that tears your throat and renders it like sawdust and keeps you unable to even moan for help.  You are certain it can never be quenched.

Hours or days or maybe even weeks later you arrive somewhere familiar and through your intoxicated stupor you can see a door, battered and bruised only slightly more than the building around it.  The yellow paint of the walls around it is peeling and the brightness of it reaches behind your eyes and squeezes your head, trying to break it with its power.  The icons sitting in the windows are the only things that are clear; you can see the familiar saints’ faces as they scowl in disapproval, and you hang your head, unsure of what you are ashamed of.

There is a loud, bitter shriek of rusting iron hinges and the scraping of wood as the door opens; you groan and cover your ears in an attempt to shut it out.  Light pours from the interior of the building.  You briefly smell candlesmoke and alcohol and fur, but those fade in comparison to the figure that stands in the door.

You do not know who it is.  You don’t even remember what you came here for.  The only thing you recognize, in the haze of color and light, is the scent of something beautifully, deliciously sweet, directly in front of you and more tempting than anything you have ever known.

“Mircea?!” someone says, and when you breathe (the air rakes your lungs and you choke) you take in an even deeper draught of the scent.  You want to be nearer.  If you can only be near to this scent, all of the pain will go away.  “Mircea, what the… what the _hell_ , you said – you said you’d be back after a couple of hours, and it’s been days, do you know how, how _worried_ I was, do you. . . .”

You take a step forward, leaning out to grab what looks like the doorframe.  You hit something hard and rough and rest most of your weight on it, leaning closer to the figure that the scent is coming from.

“God, are you alright?”

You are much taller than the figure with the scent, and it smells like something you could eat.  Your mouth hangs open, and something bitter drips onto your tongue.

“… Come inside and go to bed – you’ll, well, I don’t know how you’ll feel in the morning, but you should at least get some rest. . . .”

The figure wraps an arm around your waist, and something soft and _full_ of something deliciously sweet brushes across your nose and there is no way you could have resisted any longer.

“Is that _blood_ on—“ the figure says, before you sink your teeth into its neck.

* * *

**7.**

It tastes even sweeter than it smelled.

* * *

**8.**

You wake up heaped in the corner. 

The colors are still there, but they are nowhere near as intense or as blurry; you can clearly see your own kitchen table in the center of the room, and sunlight reaching through the thin curtains to cast Ciprian’s things in a soft glow.  It must be morning, you conclude, because you can smell vendors with their bread and fruit out on the street, and you hear housewives arguing down the prices.  Somewhere a band of gypsy children runs down a street, shouting in a language you don’t understand.

And in the middle of the floor is Ciprian, with a still chest.

Your heart sinks into your stomach and you want to choke; everything snaps out of focus as you scramble on your hands and knees over to your brother, praying to God and Christ and the Virgin and every saint in existence that no, this isn’t what you think it is, _this_ _isn’t what you think it is_.

It seems like ages but it takes only seconds for you to finally sit beside the boy, whispering his name and then saying it and then _shouting_ it, _demanding_ he wake up.  When he doesn’t respond, you push away the stray strands of dark hair that have fallen over his forehead and eyes, gently running your thumbs over his cheeks.  There is dried blood on his face, his lips.

His eyes are open still, glassy and faded and staring straight ahead.  They do not move as you pull his head into your lap.

Hastily you lean forward and open his heavy coat; as you do so, it falls away from his neck and you see the pool of dried blood staining his skin and clothing, and the horrendous wound on his neck that could only have been made by an animal.  The flesh surrounding it is deep black and purple with bruises, and as you peel back more of his clothing – tearing at the embroidered shirt when you can’t pull it any further – you see that the bruises are sprinkled across his shoulder and his arm as well.

You feel sick already, your stomach churning and your throat stopped up – you are unable to breathe, you notice, though your body hasn’t suffered for it – but as you sit back and run a finger down the side of Ciprian’s face one more time, you can still taste the sweetness of his blood in your mouth.

* * *

**9.**

An hour passes.  Then two.  Three.  Still you sit on the floor, as the sun rises in the sky and Ciprian shows no signs of waking from his stupor.

At the fourth hour, you gently stand and then pick him up; his body is small and fragile in your arms, and you fear to break him, so you move slowly through two small rooms until you reach the small bed with the quilt the boy had sewn himself, and you lay the body on top of this, careful not to twist any of his limbs.  He _could_ still wake up.  Miracles do happen, even in this century. 

You want to clean the blood away, but you are loathe to leave Ciprian on his own; if you had not left in the first place, this never would have happened, so you lean against the wall and slowly slide to the ground, never taking your eyes from your brother.  You pray to everyone you can think of and then to all of them again, swearing that if only you can have your brother back, you’ll never pick another pocket, or burn another building, or speak badly about priests ever again. 

You aren’t sure how much time passes.  You only know about the rising and the setting of the sun.

As the hours slowly crawl by you can feel that deep, carnivorous thirst building again in your throat, too deep for you to ignore.  You try, reminding yourself that this is a symptom of all your mistakes, and you _cannot_ act on it again, and you bite your hand and grimace at the stale, coppery liquid that comes out.

* * *

**10.**

You think at first that you have misheard – the voice is too dry and rough to be his.  After a long beat, you raise your head, gazing at the bed that glows in more colors than you had thought existed. 

And there is your brother, unsteadily propped on one elbow as he stares at you, his eyes glowing faintly like a dog’s in the darkness.

And then he speaks again.

_Frate?”_

“I’m here,” you say, the words foreign and heavy – you haven’t spoken in days.

“Promise?”

Quickly you stand, with the intent of moving to his bedside to reassure him that yes, you’re there, and you will not leave again, but as soon as you do so Ciprian’s eyes widen and he stumbles back across the bed, pushing himself against the wall. 

Hesitantly, you say, “I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> _podul mogosoaiei_ was a major street in bucharest as it was originally the trade route between it and brasov (drumul brasovului). it was also the first paved road in bucharest, and was renamed _calea victoriei_ after independence from the ottoman empire in 1878. today it is still a major avenue and historical location in the city.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> romanian folklore is known for its vampires, the strigoi and the moroi, but even though i love romanian folklore i made a conscious choice not to work with it here. this fic was based on a conversation i had with some friends about vampire anatomy and physiology.


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